At first, I was wholly taken in. Right up to: "You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit." In a single sentence, it became clear that this is a politically-driven journalistic tirade, intended for mass consumption by the like-minded, rather than an actual letter meant for the eyes of the alleged recipients. A clue- "Going AWOL" is actually far less of a "crime" than it's made to sound. If you're in the military, and you go on a day trip to the next town over, you've gone AWOL. In fact, you don't even have to really go anywhere. If your unit finds that it can't contact you at a moment's notice, you've technically "Gone AWOL". You can be AWOL in the goddamn bathroom.

Another aspect. Whether Saddam actually had chemical agents put in missiles or bombs was immaterial. He reneged on the conditions agreed to in the surrender from the first Desert Storm. At that point in time, Bush was free to commit troops as he saw fit, as a continuation of the first Gulf War. Certainly, it was ill- advised, but not "illegal" by any stretch of the imagination. You'd have a better chance prosecuting Kennedy for the bay of Pigs operation.

Alphax:Snowflake Tubbybottom: Everybody always seems to forget:Seventy-Two Percent of Americans Support War Against Iraq[upload.wikimedia.org image 800x460]It's easy to look back with what you now know my friend but you enlisted knowing they can send you anywhere at any time. Godspeed.

Not relevant. Popularity doesn't make crimes not criminal.

When the stance is embraced by 2/3 of the nation's lawmakers (and 98% of the controlling party), it DOES make the crimes not criminal.

HAMMERTOE:At first, I was wholly taken in. Right up to: "You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit." In a single sentence, it became clear that this is a politically-driven journalistic tirade, intended for mass consumption by the like-minded, rather than an actual letter meant for the eyes of the alleged recipients. A clue- "Going AWOL" is actually far less of a "crime" than it's made to sound. If you're in the military, and you go on a day trip to the next town over, you've gone AWOL. In fact, you don't even have to really go anywhere. If your unit finds that it can't contact you at a moment's notice, you've technically "Gone AWOL". You can be AWOL in the goddamn bathroom.

Another aspect. Whether Saddam actually had chemical agents put in missiles or bombs was immaterial. He reneged on the conditions agreed to in the surrender from the first Desert Storm. At that point in time, Bush was free to commit troops as he saw fit, as a continuation of the first Gulf War. Certainly, it was ill- advised, but not "illegal" by any stretch of the imagination. You'd have a better chance prosecuting Kennedy for the bay of Pigs operation.

MacWizard:Alphax: Snowflake Tubbybottom: Everybody always seems to forget:Seventy-Two Percent of Americans Support War Against Iraq[upload.wikimedia.org image 800x460]It's easy to look back with what you now know my friend but you enlisted knowing they can send you anywhere at any time. Godspeed.

Not relevant. Popularity doesn't make crimes not criminal.

When the stance is embraced by 2/3 of the nation's lawmakers (and 98% of the controlling party), it DOES make the crimes not criminal.

ReapTheChaos:"I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

sendtodave:UNC_Samurai: sendtodave: UNC_Samurai: The anti-war crowd tried to compare Iraq to Vietnam, as if we were fighting a proxy Cold War brushfire in Iraq with a superpower funneling in military aid (which, it turns out, didn't happen until we occupied the country and Al-Queda took advantage of the chaos we put in place).

Well, we made it another Vietnam. So, really, anyone who said "this will turn into another Vietnam fiasco" was right.

On the contrary, I think Afghanistan would be a closer comparison. Depending on when you consider the Vietnam War to have begun (1955, 1961, or 1964-65) the conflict in Afghanistan is our first- or second- longest war in national history. We're no closer to neutralizing the Taliban as a political-military entity, Al-Queda has migrated to Africa, and the country next door is an ally that we have to constantly watch because we know they're eventually going to stab us in the back.

Hm, good point.

Iraq gets many Like Vietnam Points due to the fiasco and false pretenses, but Afghanistan might win out solely on the quagmire category.

I think the biggest problem with the Vietnam Conflict was, we had no real defined goal. We wanted to keep the Communist North Vietnamese from making South Vietnam Communist as well, but how do you translate that into a military objective, besides "invade North Vietnam and remove the Communists from power", but the political situation prohibited that. As a result we spent a decade trying to destroy an army in the most inefficient means possible, with no way to measure success.

Fast forward to Afghanistan. We go in to remove the Taliban from power, which we nominally do. But we don't do the things necessary to fully eliminate popular support for the Taliban, and the Bush Administration certainly didn't have the understanding of Afghan culture necessary to "win the hearts and minds". We compound this problem by invading Iraq, and the operations in Afghanistan are de-prioritized. That allowed the Taliban to regroup and solidify their power base. Once the Iraq War drew down, we had a situation where we had no idea how to define success in Afghanistan. McCain was half-right about needing to occupy a country "100 years if necessary." We were able to successfully de-militarize the Japanese over the course of a decade, but they were a country that had a well-defined state organization with a head of state that insisted his people cease fighting. If we occupied/occupy Afghanistan for a generation, and we're REALLY lucky, we might raise a generation of Afghanis that appreciate Western ideas of gender equality, a more secular education, and distrust of religious fanaticism. But that would require us to roll a hell of a lot of natural 20s.

gja:ReapTheChaos: "I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Obama is the first president who had to pay back student loans for his education. Who's mother was denied healthcare because they had no insurance.

muck4doo:Hobodeluxe: djh0101010: So, he doesn't know about the 100+ Democrats who voted for the authorization to use force in Iraq?

oh he knows. but there wouldn't have been a vote had it not been for the lies and machinations of the neocons and contractors who wanted this blood and treasure for their own selfish reasons.

Translation: Democrats are stupid and gullible. Don't blame them for the dumb choices they make. Wascally wepubwicans tricked dem into it! I'm gonna get you wabbit!

no. you have to remember they are all political animals. the climate at the time (thank you "liberal" media for swallowing the entire load) was such that if you didn't vote for it you were un-American traitors ,soft on defense and downright chickenshiat.

jso2897:Bartman66: Yogimus: You know what makes me weep? How everyone OTHER than those two get a complete pass.

/lookin at you congress

THISFunny how quickly the left ONLY blame the "others" and not their own. Bill Clinton? Al Gore? just a sample of the powerful leaders that SWEAR TO GOD and have NO DOUBT of Sadams WMD's ... but hey ... can't blame anyone else but b-b-b-b-BUSH

More importantly, it doesn't matter anymore. You have to go all the way back to the cold war to see when and where our policy in the middle east started going wrong, and none of the laying of blame is going to fix it now.I like Obama, and voted for him - but I do not deceive myself into thinking that he has brought us anything but a slightly more moderate version of the same old broken policy.At some point soon, we are going to have to choose between being a healthy, prosperous sovereign nation, and being cop and nanny to an ungrateful and undeserving world - and until we face, and make that choice, nothing is really going to change.

THIS IS SPOT ON!!!!!It will be very tough to find a more honest and truthful posting on Fark.

theflatline:I can agree with him, but my father, an 82 year old Korean war vet, who has been on the verge of death for the last 10 years, the VA has been incredible, from his mobility scooter, the ramp they built on my parents back porch, to the lift the put on my parents stairs. And he spends at least 1 week a month in the VA getting treated for UTIs, and the nurses and rehab specialists they send to the house, not too mention the meds, the catheters and the diapers, and when he goes there at least twice a month in an ambulance, they do a spot on job.

It seems the VA mileage varies. My dad has had a pretty great run with them as well. I suppose it depends on the people you deal with as well as the region.

Dusk-You-n-Me:Shut up, all of you. Go away. You are complicit in one way or another in a giant crime containing many great crimes. Atone in secret. Wash the blood off your hands in private. Because there were people who got it right. Anthony Zinni. Eric Shiseki. Hans Blix. Mohamed ElBaradei. The McClatchy Washington bureau guys. Dozens of liberal academics who got called fifth-columnists and worse. Professional military men whose careers suffered as a result. Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets around the world. The governments of Canada and France. Those people, I will listen to this week. Go to hell, the rest of you, and go there in silence and in shame.

Link

After the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy gave everyone on his National Security Council a copy of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August, and insisted they read it. His reasoning was a passage in the book where, after the war, a French and German general are discussing the war. One of them asked something to the effect of, "Why did we go to war?" The other general replied, "I don't know." Kennedy insisted they read Guns of August because, should they ever have to answer the question of why their administration got the nation into a war, the answer "I don't know" was absolutely unacceptable.

A lot of people have supported irresponsible wars throughout the centuries. At least those who realize their mistakes and tell the world they have done so stand a greater chance of preventing such mistakes in the future. And they're certainly a hell of a lot more productive than those who sit back and say nothing. So yes, while a handful of people were able to not buy into the lies and rhetoric, it's generally easier to avoid bad policy in the future if you let people who made mistakes keep that in the public consciousness. So kindly take your high farking horse elsewhere.

MacWizard:When the stance is embraced by 2/3 of the nation's lawmakers (and 98% of the controlling party), it DOES make the crimes not criminal.

so if I lie to you and commit criminal fraud it's not illegal as long as you are a lawmaker and you fell for it?the criminal element to me isn't the war itself. it's the way they fabricated "evidence" and misrepresented the threat. I don't care who fell for it. they clearly had an Iraq agenda when they took office. 9/11 was just the lubricant. They paid well for ex-pats like Chalabi and Curveball to say what they needed them to say. The completely dismissed any evidence to contradict their lies. They by-passed normal intelligence channels to make sure their lies didn't receive the proper scrutiny. They even went as far as exposing entire covert CIA front companies to squash any pushback.

Hobodeluxe:MacWizard: When the stance is embraced by 2/3 of the nation's lawmakers (and 98% of the controlling party), it DOES make the crimes not criminal.

so if I lie to you and commit criminal fraud it's not illegal as long as you are a lawmaker and you fell for it?the criminal element to me isn't the war itself. it's the way they fabricated "evidence" and misrepresented the threat. I don't care who fell for it. they clearly had an Iraq agenda when they took office. 9/11 was just the lubricant. They paid well for ex-pats like Chalabi and Curveball to say what they needed them to say. The completely dismissed any evidence to contradict their lies. They by-passed normal intelligence channels to make sure their lies didn't receive the proper scrutiny. They even went as far as exposing entire covert CIA front companies to squash any pushback.

"Wholesale" indeed. You seem to skipped right over the part where I said that it was "ill-advised". I was only speaking in the context of addressing people who were accusing it of being "illegal". Nowhere did I even insinuate that it was "good". Just like I don't particularly agree with drone warfare either.

Wholesale Ass:Hobodeluxe: MacWizard: When the stance is embraced by 2/3 of the nation's lawmakers (and 98% of the controlling party), it DOES make the crimes not criminal.

so if I lie to you and commit criminal fraud it's not illegal as long as you are a lawmaker and you fell for it?the criminal element to me isn't the war itself. it's the way they fabricated "evidence" and misrepresented the threat. I don't care who fell for it. they clearly had an Iraq agenda when they took office. 9/11 was just the lubricant. They paid well for ex-pats like Chalabi and Curveball to say what they needed them to say. The completely dismissed any evidence to contradict their lies. They by-passed normal intelligence channels to make sure their lies didn't receive the proper scrutiny. They even went as far as exposing entire covert CIA front companies to squash any pushback.

And then Obama came around the corner and he licked it up.

actually he starting shutting it down in Iraq. but you already know that don't you?

FTA:"I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States."

That he knowingly participated in a war of aggression against a country that did nothing to provoke it makes him unworthy of the "hero" tag. I have as much sympathy for him as I do for the Germans who died invading/occupying Poland and France.

Hobodeluxe:gja: ReapTheChaos: "I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Obama is the first president who had to pay back student loans for his education. Who's mother was denied healthcare because they had no insurance.

Not salient to my point, but correct. My point is that he is NOT a 'common man' in any way shape of form. He has, by all accounts, a LOT more money and station in life than most of us. But that also goes for every 1%er

sendtodave:JackieRabbit: The BBC wrote a piece on it with links to the records.

I read it.

Anna Channault was just an Overzealous Staffer. Non-story.

I kid.

It's probably another example of "don't rock the boat, don't rile up the proles, honey boo-boo is on," if you ask me.

That was my first thought, but no, she wasn't. There are ample documents and other previously classified information that prove that she was acting on Nixon's orders. Further, he personally talked to South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, asking him to withdraw the South from the Paris talks. Nixon was a criminal and a traitor; there can be no doubt about that. I'm just not sure that Johnson's decision was correct. Certainly the North Vietnamese probably knew we were spying on them. So little would have been lost by outing Nixon.

Did you note, too, that LBJ was on the verge of going to Chicago to take over the Democratic National Convention and put himself up as the candidate? Richard Daley guaranteed he'd get him the delegates he needed. The Secret Service talked Johnson out of it, since the chaos in Chicago was so bad, they could not guarantee his safety. One has to wonder how different the world would be today if he'd followed through.

gja:Hobodeluxe: gja: ReapTheChaos: "I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Obama is the first president who had to pay back student loans for his education. Who's mother was denied healthcare because they had no insurance.

Not salient to my point, but correct. My point is that he is NOT a 'common man' in any way shape of form. He has, by all accounts, a LOT more money and station in life than most of us. But that also goes for every 1%er

Well he does now. He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth like all those before him.

jso2897:Bartman66: Yogimus: You know what makes me weep? How everyone OTHER than those two get a complete pass.

/lookin at you congress

THISFunny how quickly the left ONLY blame the "others" and not their own. Bill Clinton? Al Gore? just a sample of the powerful leaders that SWEAR TO GOD and have NO DOUBT of Sadams WMD's ... but hey ... can't blame anyone else but b-b-b-b-BUSH

More importantly, it doesn't matter anymore. You have to go all the way back to the cold war to see when and where our policy in the middle east started going wrong, and none of the laying of blame is going to fix it now.I like Obama, and voted for him - but I do not deceive myself into thinking that he has brought us anything but a slightly more moderate version of the same old broken policy.At some point soon, we are going to have to choose between being a healthy, prosperous sovereign nation, and being cop and nanny to an ungrateful and undeserving world - and until we face, and make that choice, nothing is really going to change.

You just got fav's BIG TIME. If you weren't already a TF'er I was ready to Paypal that shiat ASAP./slow-respectful-golfclap.gif

DrPainMD:That he knowingly participated in a war of aggression against a country that did nothing to provoke it makes him unworthy of the "hero" tag. I have as much sympathy for him as I do for the Germans who died invading/occupying Poland and France.

"I joined the military to fulfill a personal vendetta." is only a peg or two more noble than "I only joined for the college money!".

Hobodeluxe:gja: ReapTheChaos: "I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Obama is the first president who had to pay back student loans for his education. Who's mother was denied healthcare because they had no insurance.

There was a bit of research done not too long ago estimating the adjusted modern net worth of every president. Obama was worth about $5 million, the vast majority of which was book royalties. He was the first President since Carter to have a net worth less than $10 million, and the lowest since Truman. Granted, the study took into account post-White House revenue and acquisitions (Clinton's $38 million was derived largely from post-presidential income).

Truman's family had some regional political connections in Missouri, but they weren't particularly wealthy. Truman served in the Army during the First World War, but became a private businessman after the war. He actually went bankrupt trying to run a hat store; he was in debt for that until he ran for the Senate in 1934 (a political supporter paid his debt off). So I'd say Truman is the closest to Obama in terms of financial difficulties in the modern era. I mean, we can go back to Lincoln and his years spent toiling as a boatman and self-taught lawyer, but that just doesn't happen anymore.

Bartman66:Yogimus: You know what makes me weep? How everyone OTHER than those two get a complete pass.

/lookin at you congress

THISFunny how quickly the left ONLY blame the "others" and not their own. Bill Clinton? Al Gore? just a sample of the powerful leaders that SWEAR TO GOD and have NO DOUBT of Sadams WMD's ... but hey ... can't blame anyone else but b-b-b-b-BUSH

and yet they weren't the ones who desired it so much that they invaded and occupied the country.

GoldSpider:Worthless piece of shiat troll: That he knowingly participated in a war of aggression against a country that did nothing to provoke it makes him unworthy of the "hero" tag. I have as much sympathy for him as I do for the Germans who died invading/occupying Poland and France.

"I joined the military to fulfill a personal vendetta." is only a peg or two more noble than "I only joined for the college money!".

Are you sure Tomas Young was saying that or did he just poorly articulate a sentiment similar to "I wanted to avenge those who were killed at Pearl Harbor"?

Yogimus:Before we get too carried away here, please remember that there WERE nerve agents in Iraq, which was the whole issue behind the whole U.N. inspection teams finding the storage areas unsealed after they secured them. Furthermore, the military has been steadily disposing those stockpiles since the war began.

Iraq having weapons is not a legitimate reason to go to war against them. Every country has weapons. The US has the biggest stockpile of bio/chem weapons on the planet, and we supplied Saddam with the ones he used on the Kurds, and then, even after the photos of dead Kurds made headlines around the world, replenished his supply.

UNC_Samurai:Hobodeluxe: gja: ReapTheChaos: "I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Obama is the first president who had to pay back student loans for his education. Who's mother was denied healthcare because they had no insurance.

There was a bit of research done not too long ago estimating the adjusted modern net worth of every president. Obama was worth about $5 million, the vast majority of which was book royalties. He was the first President since Carter to have a net worth less than $10 million, and the lowest since Truman. Granted, the study took into account post-White House revenue and acquisitions (Clinton's $38 million was derived largely from post-presidential income).

Truman's family had some regional political connections in Missouri, but they weren't particularly wealthy. Truman served in the Army during the First World War, but became a private businessman after the war. He actually went bankrupt trying to run a hat store; he was in debt for that until he ran for the Senate in ...

yeah I was only referring to the current generation. Obama is the closest we've had to a "common man" since Lincoln imo.

Hobodeluxe:gja: Hobodeluxe: gja: ReapTheChaos: "I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Obama is the first president who had to pay back student loans for his education. Who's mother was denied healthcare because they had no insurance.

Not salient to my point, but correct. My point is that he is NOT a 'common man' in any way shape of form. He has, by all accounts, a LOT more money and station in life than most of us. But that also goes for every 1%er

Well he does now. He wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth like all those before him.

I didn't raise that point. Matter of fact: went to HARVARD (like 5 times more costly than where I attended), became a lawyer in a VERY lucrative firm, earned a LOT more than most of us will (funny thing is he took a gross pay CUT by being prez). Lived in a very upscale neighborhood (where I am sure the realtors wouldn't even return my call asking about prices "if you have to ask you cant afford to live here sir").

I don't give a damn HOW they came to be so bloody wealthy, just that they are (and were for a while back).

JackieRabbit:That was my first thought, but no, she wasn't. There are ample documents and other previously classified information that prove that she was acting on Nixon's orders. Further, he personally talked to South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem, asking him to withdraw the South from the Paris talks. Nixon was a criminal and a traitor; there can be no doubt about that.

I was just trying to fit in the overzealous staffer meme. I believe that Nixon was behind it.

Did you note, too, that LBJ was on the verge of going to Chicago to take over the Democratic National Convention and put himself up as the candidate? Richard Daley guaranteed he'd get him the delegates he needed. The Secret Service talked Johnson out of it, since the chaos in Chicago was so bad, they could not guarantee his safety. One has to wonder how different the world would be today if he'd followed through.

I wonder why he didn't just announce his canidacy from, oh, anywhere else. I also wonder how truly committed LBJ really was to peace -- at the expense of his good friends at Haliburton.

GoldSpider:DrPainMD: That he knowingly participated in a war of aggression against a country that did nothing to provoke it makes him unworthy of the "hero" tag. I have as much sympathy for him as I do for the Germans who died invading/occupying Poland and France.

"I joined the military to fulfill a personal vendetta." is only a peg or two more noble than "I only joined for the college money!".

DrPainMD:Yogimus: Before we get too carried away here, please remember that there WERE nerve agents in Iraq, which was the whole issue behind the whole U.N. inspection teams finding the storage areas unsealed after they secured them. Furthermore, the military has been steadily disposing those stockpiles since the war began.

Iraq having weapons is not a legitimate reason to go to war against them. Every country has weapons. The US has the biggest stockpile of bio/chem weapons on the planet, and we supplied Saddam with the ones he used on the Kurds, and then, even after the photos of dead Kurds made headlines around the world, replenished his supply.

It was not about weapons. it was about 2 things. oil contracts and having military bases in the region. it was for Israel, The Carlyle Group,Halliburton's and the other contractors' benefits. It was all part of the plan to take over the region. Iran would have been next had they not botched Iraq so badly.

Funny, he does not speak for my vfw post of the millions given a chance at freedom... I wonder what those buried in mass graves by Sadam would say. Its ok, im sure there were a few veterans who did not like deposing Hitler either and they were drafted so I can kinda see their point.

UNC_Samurai:Are you sure Tomas Young was saying that or did he just poorly articulate a sentiment similar to "I wanted to avenge those who were killed at Pearl Harbor"?

Either way, I find it hard to sympathize with a soldier complaining that he didn't get sent to the combat theater of his choosing, regardless of the false pretenses that put him in Iraq.

Perhaps I've been on the Internet too long, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find out in a few weeks that "Thomas Young" was the figment of some OWS holdover's imagination. Please don't confuse my skepticism for anything other than just that.

Hobodeluxe:UNC_Samurai: Hobodeluxe: gja: ReapTheChaos: "I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines... I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives..."

People who do things on others "behalf" should have to check with every last one of them to make sure they actually want them to do it or they should STFU.

/pet peeve.

My feelings as well. Please do not speak for me. I fall into a bunch of the categories he lumped all together. I thank and love him for his service, but my mouth and voice work perfectly well and I need nobody to speak for me. Believe me, I can be heard when I so desire.

And on that note, I hate ALL politicians equally. They are ALL excrement. Obama is particularly repugnant because he plays the "i'm a guy like you" bullcrap card (and to be fair there have been a few who postured in that manner over the years). Sorry, but a well-heeled, Harvard educated, lawyer from Chicago's better neighborhood has little in common with me, a struggling father of 1, living in an overpriced apartment and straining to make ends meet.

I'm pretty sure Obama is the first president who had to pay back student loans for his education. Who's mother was denied healthcare because they had no insurance.

There was a bit of research done not too long ago estimating the adjusted modern net worth of every president. Obama was worth about $5 million, the vast majority of which was book royalties. He was the first President since Carter to have a net worth less than $10 million, and the lowest since Truman. Granted, the study took into account post-White House revenue and acquisitions (Clinton's $38 million was derived largely from post-presidential income).

Truman's family had some regional political connections in Missouri, but they weren't particularly wealthy. Truman served in the Army during the First World War, but became a private businessman after the war. He actually went bankrupt trying to run a hat store; he was in debt for that until he ran for ...

If you boys are done putting him in the 'bro seat' and want to get real, please let me know via a post how many of you all have FIVE FARKING MILLION DOLLARS to your name.

"Obama is the closest we've had to a "common man" since Lincoln imo." L M A O"Closest" is a very subjective term in that manner of use. Not a very good measure.